Jordan Mechner Explained

Jordan Mechner
Birth Date:4 June 1964
Birth Place:New York City, United States
Spouse:[1] [2]

Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964)[3] is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer.[4] A major figure in the development of cinematic video games[5] and a pioneer in video game animation,[6] he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.

Mechner is the recipient of many accolades, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award.[7] His works are often included in all-time lists of the game industry's best and most influential titles.[8] [9]

In 1993, Mechner founded Smoking Car Productions to design and direct the adventure game The Last Express. While commercially unprofitable at the time of its release, the game has garnered a cult following and is recognized as an innovative work in interactive narrative.[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

As an author, Mechner has written graphic novels in collaboration with different illustrators, including the New York Times bestseller Templar (2013), Monte Cristo (2022), and Liberty (2023).[16] In 2023, Mechner made his debut as a graphic novel writer–artist, with the autobiographical Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family. Replay was awarded the 2023 Chateau de Cheverny prize for historical graphic novels.[17]

In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.[18]

Early life

Mechner was born in New York City in 1964, into a family of European Jewish immigrants. His father is psychologist Francis Mechner,[19] [20] and his mother was a programmer.[21] He attended Yale University in the 1980s.[22] [23] [24]

Career

While at Yale, Mechner wrote several Apple II games that he submitted for publication, but which were rejected. Asteroid Blaster, an Asteroids clone, was submitted to Hayden Software and abstract arcade game Deathbounce to Broderbund. Mechner then spent two years at Yale writing his first published game, Karateka (1984), which went to number one on the Billboard software chart.

His second game, Prince of Persia, was released in 1989 after more than three years of work. He wrote both games in the 6502 assembly language for the Apple II, though that system was in decline through the late 1980s, and little new software was released by 1989. Initially, Prince of Persia sold poorly, but as it was ported to other systems, sales increased. Eventually, it was adapted for about thirty computer and console platforms.[25]

Following the completion of Prince of Persia, Mechner attended film school, traveled to Cuba to produce and direct a short documentary film, and lived in Paris for a year.[26] During this period, he designed and directed the sequel, , released in 1993.

He founded the independent developer Smoking Car Productions in 1993, where he led the production of the CD-ROM adventure game The Last Express.[26] Smoking Car grew to sixty people, a huge team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer to finish than anticipated. When finally released in 1997, it was positively reviewed but did not recoup its budget. It has since become a fan favorite with adventure gamers and critics alike.[10] [27] [28] [29] The Last Express was re-released in 2012 by French publisher DotEmu for mobile and other platforms.[30] [31] [32]

In 2003, Mechner directed the award-winning documentary Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story.[33]

He released the recovered source code to the original Prince of Persia game in 2012 and published his 1980s journals, detailing the development process that went into making Karateka and Prince of Persia.[34] [35]

In 2017, he won the Honorific Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.[36]

Prince of Persia revival

In 2001, Mechner worked with Ubisoft to reboot Prince of Persia. Developed at Ubisoft Montreal with Mechner as game designer, writer, and creative consultant, was released in 2003. It received twelve nominations and eight awards at the Interactive Achievement Awards.[37] Ubisoft has since published four more Prince of Persia sequels and several spinoffs, including the Assassin's Creed franchise, which was initially conceived as a sequel to Sands of Time.[38] In 2024, Ubisoft released , a new relaunch of the franchise, developed at its Montpellier studio.

Mechner became one of the few video game creators to adapt his own creation as a feature film, with Disney's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Mike Newell, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina. The film was released on May 28, 2010. Mechner wrote the first drafts of the screenplay and acted as executive producer.

Writing and directing

In 2003, Mechner wrote and directed the documentary film Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. It won the 2003 IDA award for Best Short Documentary,[39] was for an Academy Award nomination,[40] and received its broadcast premiere on PBS Independent Lens in 2005.[41]

Mechner collaborated with a team on the 2008 Prince of Persia graphic novel. The author's graphic novel Templar was published in July 2013.[42] [43] Templar became a New York Times best-selling book and was nominated for an Eisner Award.[44] Mechner also wrote the graphic novel Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, to tie in with the release of the film in 2010.

Mechner has written a screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Turner's Fathom for Fox Studios.[45]

He has published two volumes of his game development journals from the 1980s, one describing the making of Karateka and the other focusing on Prince of Persia. He was able to recover the source code of the original Prince of Persia game he programmed from 23-year-old 3.5" Apple ProDOS floppy disks, found in April 2012, and posted it online.[46]

In 2017, Mechner moved to Montpellier, France. He has collaborated with European illustrators on graphic novels, including Monte Cristo (2023) and Liberty (2022).[47] [48] In 2023, he released an autobiographical graphic novel, Replay: Memoires d'une famille. He continues to write new graphic novels.[49] [50]

Works

Games

Title Year Platform Publisher
Karateka 1984 Broderbund
Prince of Persia 1989 Broderbund
1993 Broderbund
The Last Express 1997 Broderbund
2003 Ubisoft
Karateka 2012 Windows, Xbox 360D3 Publisher
The Making of Karateka 2023 Digital Eclipse

Bibliography

Title Year Publisher Collaborators ref
2008 A.B. Sina (writer), LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.)
The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985–1993 2010
Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm 2010 Todd McFarlane, Bernard Chang, Cameron Stewart, et al. (illus.)
Solomon's Thieves (Templar: Book One) 2010 First Second Books LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.)
The Making of Karateka: Journals 1982–1985 2012 Amazon
Templar 2013 First Second Books LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.)
The Making of Prince of Persia 2020 Stripe Press
Samak the Ayyar
(English-language rendering of the Samak-e Ayyar tales)
2021 Freydoon Rassouli (trans.) [51] [52]
Monte Cristo 2022–2023 Mario Alberti (illus.) & Claudia Palescandolo (col.)
Liberty 2023–2024 Étienne Le Roux (illus.), Loïc Chevallier (illus.) & Elvire De Cock (col.)
Replay: Mémoires d'une famille 2023 Delcourt Editions
Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family 2024 First Second Books

Filmography

Personal life

Mechner married Whitney Hills in 2014. The couple divorced in 2017.[53]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Jordan Mechner on Twitter. Mechner. Jordan. April 7, 2014. Twitter. October 3, 2014. Tweeting from cloud nine, because I've just married @whitney.. https://web.archive.org/web/20150201204821/https://twitter.com/jmechner/status/453367119392935936. February 1, 2015.
  2. Web site: Case Summary - Online Services (Case Number: BD653303). Los Angeles County Superior Court. June 18, 2019.
  3. Web site: Mechner. Jordan. Blog 4 June 1989. Jordanmechner.com. https://web.archive.org/web/20140519184953/http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/1989/06/june-4-1989/. May 19, 2014.
  4. Web site: Jordan Mechner – Biography. jordanmechner.com. February 3, 2024.
  5. Web site: Jordan Mechner – CHM. computerhistory.org. February 3, 2024.
  6. Web site: Creating Prince of Persia in 1989 with fluid animations before the days of motion-capture – TechSpot. techspot.com. February 3, 2024.
  7. Web site: Pioneer Archive – Game Developers Choice Awards. gamechoiceawards.com. February 3, 2024.
  8. Web site: Top 20 MS-DOS Games That You Must Play – Gaming Shift. gamingshift.com. February 3, 2024.
  9. Web site: The best adventure games – PC Gamer. pcgamer.com. February 3, 2024.
  10. Web site: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games – Adventure Gamers. adventuregamers.com. February 3, 2024.
  11. Web site: The Last Express is as mesmerising and relevant as ever, 25 years later. gameshub.com. February 3, 2024.
  12. Web site: The Last Express: Revisiting an Unsung Classic. gamedeveloper.com. February 3, 2024.
  13. Web site: Best Game Ever Set on a Train Across Europe. giantbomb.com. February 3, 2024.
  14. Web site: The Last Express, the 90s real-time adventure game that still feels groundbreaking – AUTOMATON WEST. automaton-media.com. February 3, 2024.
  15. Web site:
    1. 12: The Last Express – Adventure Gamers
    . adventuregamers.com. February 3, 2024.
  16. Web site: jordan mechner – Search Results. worldcat.org. February 3, 2024.
  17. News: Le Prix BD des Rendez-vous de l’histoire – Château de Cheverny 2023 – ActuaBD. actuabd.com. February 3, 2024.
  18. Web site: IGN – 60. Jordan Mechner . IGN . November 15, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140420073616/http://www.ign.com/top/game-creators/60.html . April 20, 2014.
  19. Web site: The Last Express: Video Game as Art – 25fps. 25fps.cz. March 15, 2012.
  20. Web site: LAist Interview: Jordan Mechner: LAist . August 25, 2015 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20171020120714/http://laist.com/2006/01/30/laist_interview_jordan_mechner.php . October 20, 2017 .
  21. Mechner. Jordan. John Romero. Episode 7 - Jordan Mechner. Apple Time Warp. Libsyn. 2017. June 15, 2019. June 18, 2019.
  22. News: Steve Fulton. What Indie Game Developers Can Learn From Jordan Mechner's Book "The Making Of Karateka". Gamasutra. September 29, 2014. August 17, 2015.
  23. Web site: How Prince of Persia's famous jump animation was made / Boing Boing. boingboing.net. October 30, 2014.
  24. News: Charles McGrath. A Gamer's World, but a Dramatist's Sensibility. The New York Times. May 21, 2010. August 17, 2015.
  25. Web site: Prince of Persia. Derboo. Sam. May 18, 2008. Hardcore Gaming 101. July 6, 2023.
  26. An Interview with Jordan Mechner. Next Generation. 25 . Imagine Media. January 1997. 108.
  27. Web site: The Last Express – Metacritic. metacritic.com. February 4, 2024.
  28. Web site: The Last Express (1997) – MobyGames. mobygames.com. February 4, 2024.
  29. Web site: The Last Express Reviews – GameSpot. gamespot.com. February 4, 2024.
  30. News: Marchiafava . Jeff . The Last Express Arrives on iOS Soon – Game Informer . https://web.archive.org/web/20120928062200/http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/09/24/the-last-express-arrives-on-ios-soon.aspx . dead . September 28, 2012 . February 4, 2024 . September 24, 2012.
  31. News: Jay . Matthew . HonestGamers – The Last Express (PC) News . February 4, 2024 . September 25, 2012.
  32. Web site: Review: The Last Express (iOS) – Destructoid . February 4, 2024.
  33. Web site: Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story – Documentary – Independent Lens – PBS. pbs.org. February 3, 2024.
  34. News: The Geeks Who Saved Prince of Persia's Source Code from Digital Death – WIRED. wired.com. February 3, 2024.
  35. News: Original Prince of Persia source code discovered, released for free – GamesRadar+. gamesradar.com. February 3, 2024.
  36. Web site: Kaplan, de escritor fracasado a estrella de videojuego tras jugar 272 días . December 9, 2017 . July 8, 2019.
  37. http://www.interactive.org/games/video_game_details.asp?idAward=2004&idGame=253 Prince of Persia award page
  38. News: Jessey . Ben . Was Assassin's Creed Supposed to Be a Prince of Persia Game? . January 28, 2024.
  39. Web site: 2003 IDA Documentary Awards Winners. Documentary.org. International Documentary Association. July 6, 2023.
  40. Web site: Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. EMRO. Pennsylvania State University. July 6, 2023.
  41. Web site: Independent Lens . CHAVEZ RAVINE – PBS. www.pbs.org.
  42. Web site: Templar: historical caper graphic novel from Prince of Persia creator / Boing Boing. boingboing.net. July 10, 2013.
  43. Web site: From Games to Comics: First Second's Prince of Persia OGN. August 4, 2023 .
  44. Web site: Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees 2014 | Comic-Con International: San Diego . April 21, 2014 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20141006082737/http://www.comic-con.org/awards/will-eisner-comic-industry-award-nominees-2014 . October 6, 2014 .
  45. https://www.variety.com/article/VR1118000796.html?categoryid=13&cs=1 "Megan Fox to star in 'Fathom'"
  46. Web site: Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II: A running-jumping-swordfighting game I made on the Apple II from 1985-89. Jordan. Mechner. November 7, 2017. GitHub.
  47. Web site: Jordan Mechner, le créateur de Prince of Persia vit à Montpellier – En Commun. encommun.montpellier.fr. February 4, 2024.
  48. Web site: 'Prince of Persia' creator 'never imagined' game would be his magic carpet. techxplore.com. February 4, 2024.
  49. Web site: Prince of Persia creator never imagined game would be his magic carpet – The Peninsula Qatar . thepeninsulaqatar.com . February 4, 2024.
  50. Web site: The father-and-son of Karateka: how family anchored a classic game's innovations. gamedeveloper.com. February 4, 2024.
  51. Web site: Feast and Fight: A New Adaptation of "Samak the Ayar". Blankinship. Kevin. January 9, 2022. Los Angeles Review of Books. February 11, 2023.
  52. Web site: Samak the Ayyar: A Tale of Ancient Persia. 2021. Farhang Foundation. February 11, 2023.
  53. Web site: Jordan Mechner vs Whitney Hills Court Records. UniCourt. June 18, 2019.